Ben sent me a link today to a story on CNN where a nutrition professor lost 27 pounds on a junk food diet of twinkies, nutty bars, doughnuts and Doritos.

When I mentioned earlier that I found certain aspects of eating vegan to be cultish, it pretty much could describe the religious nature of a lot discussions on diet. I even find the Eat To Live (ETL) people online to be a little scary, especially with their references to the Standard American Diet (SAD) as if it was Satan.

As I mentioned earlier this week, I have started working pasta and cheese back into my diet, and I’m still losing weight (today’s 3PS weight: 213.0). But I’ve totally eliminated potato chips, chocolate and meat, at least for now. This allows me to eat enough to feel full, but not enough to add a lot of extra calories. Plus, put a big ass salad in front of me and I feel free to stop eating when I’m full. I was raised to clean my plate and seeing a little bit left, even if it was still about a third of a portion, would make me want to finish it. Seeing a huge amount of greens doesn’t invoke the same reaction.

As Nick mentioned in the comments, it all comes down to thermodynamics – eat less calories than you need and you’ll lose weight. Period. This appears to be exactly what the guy in the article did.

However, the question remains: can you get enough nutrition from your low calorie diet? It does little good to lose the weight yet introduce other health problems. The professor in the article did test his blood and noted that things like his cholesterol improved, but that was probably more from the fact that he gave up meat. If I’ve learned anything in this experiment it is that fat is bad – it requires so little processing by your body that it goes directly into storage and increased weight. I am doubtful that his blood work would have remained healthy if he stayed on the junk food diet for a longer period.

While the article is very straightforward with the fact that this was just an experiment, I am disheartened that many people will read it as a justification for continuing to eat crap. If paying attention to TV commercials is any indication, we gotta keep that economic machine running, with one ad for some new meat, bread and cheese concoction for 99 cents followed by an ad for expensive medication to deal with it.

Now, time to scarf down a bag of Cheetos and sit and watch “The Biggest Loser”.